RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Neural mechanisms for lexical processing in dogs
JF Science
JO Science
FD American Association for the Advancement of Science
DO 10.1126/science.aaf3777
A1 Andics, A.
A1 Gábor, A.
A1 Gácsi, M.
A1 Faragó, T.
A1 Szabó, D.
A1 Miklósi, Á.
YR 2016
UL http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/08/26/science.aaf3777.abstract
AB During speech processing, human listeners can separately analyze lexical and intonational cues to arrive at a unified representation of communicative content. The evolution of this capacity can be best investigated by comparative studies. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we explored whether and how dog brains segregate and integrate lexical and intonational information. We found a left-hemisphere bias for processing meaningful words, independently of intonation; a right auditory brain region for distinguishing intonationally marked and unmarked words; and increased activity in primary reward regions only when both lexical and intonational information were consistent with praise. Neural mechanisms to separately analyze and integrate word meaning and intonation in dogs suggest that this capacity can evolve in the absence of language.